Unemployment, March 2012

[2016 Ace readers: you can find more up-to-date employment charts here and Obama’s manufacturing and export fails here and here, respectively.]

Unemployment time again, but this time the report isn’t half-bad. Unemployment stayed the same at 8.3%, but a number of people came back into the labor force, and the number of unhappy part-timers dropped. Labor force participation went up (from 63.7% to 63.9%)!

There is a slight downside. Of the 227K jobs added, 20% were in restaurants and another 20% were temp jobs, so not the best signs of a recovering economy – but hey, better than being jobs lost.

Here’s the chart:

I expect things to slow down a bit over the next couple of months. Rising gas prices are going to hamper the economy (again), which could lead us to another Doldrum Summer.